IB elitism is bothering me.

[Loopiez]

My school is one of the few local schools which offer IB in Singapore. Most other schools which offer the IBDP are International schools, catered to expatriate kids, like the United World College, Global Indian School. My school is one that offers a through-train program, where kids who would usually do the GCSE O Levels instead get to do a programme which takes them through to the IB exams. For me however, I came from another secondary school and did my O-level exams before joining this current IB school, so most of my friends from secondary school are now doing A-levels. There isn't much elitism because my school is an IB school though. Most of us actually feel that IB might not be as strenuous as A-levels because A-levels is a lot more content heavy, and the Singapore education system right now is very focussed on rote learning. In a sense we feel IB is a better alternative because it is not a rote-learning course, which some might call the A-levels. Because IB students are a minority, there isn't really much competition between A-levels and IB. As far as I see it, everyone adopts a 'the grass is always greener' mentality. Whenever anyone hits a particularly rough point in IB, that's when they think, 'oh, hey, I wish I was doing A-levels', but we also realise that A-levels isn't exactly a walk in the park (:

[Sandwich]

A few friends of mine from the UK found that the IB students were considered stupid, not in an intellectual sense (definitely not!), but stupid for taking the IB to begin with.

And in Russia where I attended school, some of my friends who I kept in touch with, they found the IB programme to be a one-way-ticket to being screwed because the programme in their school was very shoddily taught and they didn't have a very high opinion of the Diploma anyway.

This is exactly how it was at my school. Generally people didn't care but the general consensus was that everybody who'd picked to do the IB was actually screwing themselves over because that's more or less what the IB is. Like pointlessly doing loads of extra work and having no life for the same overall conclusion that A Level students get -- I mean, since when is that considered smart. It sounds retarded to me and I actually did it. Some of the smartest people I knew did A Levels. Equally some smart people did the IB. With idiots in both camps

The main divide came socially because IB students had a very full and totally different timetable.

What the OP is describing seems to me to be a group of nerdy (surely nerdy is defined as lording your intelligence?) ****s who happen to be taking the IB. You can probably find a similar set of full of themselves ignorant idiots in the normal curriculum too if you look hard enough, it's just the label of IB has given these people an excuse to pretend they're something special. Send them to the UK to be scoffed at by their non-IB classmates and that'll take them down a peg or two.

After all, if you make a choice to screw yourself over and work twice as hard for no extra return, it's nothing to be proud of. If anything, it makes you an idiot with regard to your choosing abilities, if not intellectually an idiot.

Although I would conclude by saying that AP exams are indeed easier than the IB. However, since when did choosing a harder course which you struggle with and then receive no extra recognition for make anybody anything other than a gullible fool? It's how I felt most of the time.

[The Filipino Limner]

In our country, having a global education, an IB education is a true privilege that only some people get. In fact, the number of IB students in our country is less than .00001%.

Elitism, maybe not, but feeling more privileged, yes, but in our case, it actually helps us, because it propels us forward, to do better, and to be better.

[dubyawhy]

My school is one of the few local schools which offer IB in Singapore. Most other schools which offer the IBDP are International schools, catered to expatriate kids, like the United World College, Global Indian School. My school is one that offers a through-train program, where kids who would usually do the GCSE O Levels instead get to do a programme which takes them through to the IB exams. For me however, I came from another secondary school and did my O-level exams before joining this current IB school, so most of my friends from secondary school are now doing A-levels. There isn't much elitism because my school is an IB school though. Most of us actually feel that IB might not be as strenuous as A-levels because A-levels is a lot more content heavy, and the Singapore education system right now is very focussed on rote learning. In a sense we feel IB is a better alternative because it is not a rote-learning course, which some might call the A-levels. Because IB students are a minority, there isn't really much competition between A-levels and IB. As far as I see it, everyone adopts a 'the grass is always greener' mentality. Whenever anyone hits a particularly rough point in IB, that's when they think, 'oh, hey, I wish I was doing A-levels', but we also realise that A-levels isn't exactly a walk in the park (:

You're not with Anglo Chinese, are you?

And anyway, thanks for the input. I realise it may just be a bunch of idiots being childish, and nothing to do with the programme itself

[carpediem]

Honestly, there isn't any 'IB Elitism' at my school. IB students are actually the minority, making about one third of my grade, and many have friends who are doing the other curriculum, whether it's IB or A Levels. (Jokingly, my head teacher was shocked that IB and A Level students were eating lunch together, and I often joke about A Level-ers "taking over" my biology classroom on a Monday morning.)

Also, for the moment A Levels seem to be the more difficult course - I offered to help a friend of mine with Chemistry, took one look at her notes and told her straight out that I only understood a less than a quarter of it. (Probably because the A Level-ers have exams in May 2012 AND May 2013 instead of all the IB exams in May 2013.) The A Level-ers really seem some much more swamped with work then any of the IB students I know.

And a lot of the time it's difficult for me to hang out with my A Level friends; our schedules are so different because of our different courses, but that's never created an 'elitism' at my school.

A Levels is more content heavy compared to IB's breadth, and both courses (and any other course) are just different to each other; not necessarily better, just different.

And being on different courses makes it fun to tease my friends as 'You A Level-ers'.

Hopefully this 'elitism' blows over at your school! I'm sure when everyone is dumped with deadlines and finals and just work in general, no one cares what course you're doing.

[tixi.13 <3]

wow, i always thought it was just my school! our grade is fairly close, but at the same time - really cliquey.

in my grade, the IB kids make up maybe just over a third of poeple in the grade, with the rest obviously doing the HSC.

we do act like we're superior, but mainly for a laugh as we know the workload we get and also because a lot of people that don't do the IB, choose not to because they are too lazy and see it as being hard (we have to learn a language - wow. ) . so technically, they're the ones who are making us seem like hard-working, intelligent people, up for the challenge!

i think the IB cohort have this sort of attitude though, because we are a minority. with not many people, you grow close to all the students in your classes. theere are certainly a lot more in jokes between the IB kids compared to the HSC kids!

but i don't neccessarily think we are smarter than those doing other courses. half of my group of friends are doing the HSC and i know one of my crazy are waaaay more intelligent than i am!

and i TOTALLY agree with Access Denied! universities don't give us the credit we deserve! when i too, saw the IB requirement mark for law this year at Sydney Uni (44), i almost died!

[aronnax]

In Singapore, reactions to IB is that we are too dumb. Dumb because IB is only offered at International Schools. Only one or two government-run schools have IB, which means you have to pay quite alot to enroll. Many people, not understanding IB think 'we paid' for our education cause we are too dumb for local school.

My best friend takes Singaporean A-levels. He says that A-level is harder than IB and I agree with him. We've compared our syllabus and for Chinese, Math and Chemistry at least, A-level is harder. But I got him to admit that IB is more tedious, because we take 2 more subjects, we have ToK, we have all our IAs, IOCs, IOPs, CAS and most importantly, our EEs, whose A-level equivalent is only done by really smart humanities students and not the whole level or for all the subjects.

In the end, we both agreed that A-level and IB are two different experiences with two different expectations and goals and excel in two different ways and to compare them and declare one is better than the other is like comparing a pen and a pencil.

BTW, I thought the reason we assume that IB kids get only 5 hours a sleep because we either spend all night failing to understand ToK or we procrastinate =p

[Anima Vilis]

In my school it IB is not liked, because we are considered as the priviledged ones (it's not true!). The AP students think we do not do anything more than they do, which is just their ignorance, bacause they don't really work until it's one month before exams, and we have to do cas, tok and all ia's while they're just relaxing.

The two programmes in our school never liked eachother, also because ib students used to have slightly different uniforms. Oh, and these of us living in a students' house can have pc's, while whe AP students can't, but come on, we NEEd them for work. Who could imagine writing EE with a pen?

So the AP's treat us as inferior, and we're trying to treat them as equal, but because of their attitude towards us, it turns out to be also inferior.

[Manstein]

Okay so I'm an "IB Kid" and my best friend is an "AP Kid". I'm not really around to notice it a lot(due to different schedules), but he says that he often gets into arguments and debates with those taking IB. According to him, this usually starts with nothing serious like "Isn't your bother going to be a Junior next year? If he's math savvy he should have a shot at Calculus BC, it's pretty challenging". Then it escalates and he always claims that the IB kid gets sort of fake-disbelief/condescending/pretentious and would, after minutes of debating, resort to rolling eyes, forcibly chuckling and other stupid things kids do to make their peers feel stupid. Once he got into an argument about math and the IB kid would incessantly claim Math HL covered Calculus BC material in 2 months(idk if there's any truth to that claim, but it seems pretty dumb)

Once I was walking with a few of my IB friends past an AP Calculus class and they would sort of s******(on purpose) in front of the kids coming out and blurt out "retards" (they probably weren't serious in trying to insult, but just trolling, but the fact that this perception even exists is pretty stupid). What bothers me even more is that when someone in town encounters a kid who claims to be in the IB program, 90% of the time they will make a reference to how smart they must be, or the 5 hours of sleep they get every night. The perception has gone so far that even people not in school have this second hand "idea" that IB is some strange elite program for geniuses.

I'm proud to be part of such a system that is SUPPOSEDLY wonderful, but when non-IB kids sort of feel alienated around us (because they think we're geniuses), it really bothers me. They will constantly ask me for help with my homework, and when I fail to answer(because I don't know), they will claim that I really do know, but just don't want to help them out of contempt. Parents of kids entering high school will sometimes ask me whether or not entering their child in IB will affect their health too much or cause too much stress. When I'm out with the so-called "normal" people they will always refer to me as "the smart guy" or "nerd" (in a joking way, but it still disturbs me). The whole situation seems a little divorced from reality.

I've probably made the situation seem a lot more dire than it actually is, but you get the idea. There is so much hype going around, and I dont ACTUALLY believe IB is that much more difficult than AP(or if it even is more difficult at all).

Do you know of any "IB superiority" sentiment around your school?

I got a 39 in my diploma, so I feel I have the right to speak here. I've had this sentiment A LOT on my school. People think they're so special and awesome.

They're not. IB is not really hard, unless you take some Math HL, Chem HL, Psy HL combo, which most DON'T.

The grade average at my school was also a pitiful 32, and the world average is something like 29. So it's quite rich for IB kids to be high and mighty.

[ocfx]

It all starts with entrance exams here in Finland... not that other specialised high school programmes (e.g. music oriented programmes) don't have ones, but in any case the fact that it takes relatively more effort to get into an IB diploma programme than a regular high school programme gives the incentive. IB students feel like they were better than the others and therefore got selected. On the other hand, it's wasn't, what was described by the original poster as elitism, in our school, but definitely there was a certain feel of slight delight in the fact that we put ourselves through something a lot more than "they" did. And yes it's definitely true that we did, as do all IB students, as pointed out by Sandwich. But then there's the other side of the conversation, which is the Finnish national education curriculum, which has been praised a lot lately in the media, which gives national curriculum students some kind of backing to assert derogatory statements about the strange features of the IB curriculum, which in turn provokes IB students to assert the difficulty of the programme. Mostly it's just thanks to misinformation and so few people taking the course (as stated by lollero) that the whole conversation even remains from year to year. In the end the two programmes really just are different and have different foci. I mean I'm not really that much better off now in university here in Finland than other students. Some things aren't covered in the IB syllabus, which are covered in the national syllabus, whereas other things are covered to a greater extent in IB than in the national programme.

Edited January 18, 2012 by ocfx

[Award Winning Boss]

I don't see any because my whole school is IB. Even when i talk to my friends who don't do IB it doesn't really matter to us or them